Does your client keep changing their mind?

Client (CL): We had an interesting discussion yesterday on the reorganisation project. We concluded that we wanted to include maintenance into the project. It’s a natural link into what we are doing.

Project Manager (PM): That’s interesting. You may recall we discussed the project scope, and when we did maintenance was specifically seen as out of scope.

CL: Understood. However, we now want to change our minds!

PM: We are well into this project – 5 weeks, with another 12 weeks to go. Why don’t we finish off the project first? We can learn lessons from it and apply these to the new maintenance project.

I must stop changing my mind. There again……

CL: We would much prefer to include it in this project.

PM: I understand. What I want to do now is put this into our agreed change control process. This is the process that you as the client agreed to at the start of the project. That means you completing this form and I will put my comments on it and it will then go to the sponsor for their agreement.

Now you won’t like this, as I will suggest to the sponsor we treat the maintenance part as a separate project. You won’t like it because as the client you want us to deliver against the changes. But, we are at that point in the project that to change the scope will extend the duration of the project. We have been told several times by you that the deadline cannot be moved. On this basis I suggest we leave the project as it is and treat the maintenance project as a separate one. Your thoughts?

Does your client (or sponsor) keep changing their mind? If they do, what do you do about it?